A smart card, chip-card, and/or integrated circuit card (ICC) may be any pocket-sized card that may include an embedded integrated circuit (IC) chip that may be either a secure microcontroller and/or equivalent intelligence with internal memory and/or a memory chip alone. Smart cards may be made of plastic (e.g., polyvinyl chloride). Smart cards may be also constructed from polyethylene terephthalate based polyesters, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and/or polycarbonate. The ICC may connect to a reader with direct physical contact and/or with a remote contactless radio frequency interface. With an embedded microcontroller, the ICC may have an ability to store a substantial amount of data. The ICC may carry out their own on-card functions (e.g., encryption and/or mutual authentication) and/or interact intelligently with a smart card reader. Smart card technology may conform to international standards (ISO/IEC 7816 and ISO/IEC 14443) and/or may be available in a variety of form factors, including plastic cards, fobs, subscriber identity modules (SIMs) used in GSM mobile phones, and/or USB-based tokens.
There may be two categories of smart cards: contact and/or contactless. A contact smart card may be inserted into a smart card reader with a direct connection to a conductive contact plate on the surface of the card (typically gold plated). Transmission of commands, data, and/or card status may take place over these physical contact points. A contactless card may require only close proximity to a reader. Both the reader and/or the card may have antennae, and/or may communicate using radio frequencies (electromagnetic signal) over this contactless link. Most contactless cards may derive power for the internal chip from this electromagnetic signal. The range may be one-half to three inches for non-battery-powered cards, which may be suitable for applications such as building entry and/or payment that may benefit from a very fast card interface.
The chips used in these cards may fall into two categories: microcontroller chips and memory chips. A memory chip may be like a small floppy disk with optional security. Memory chips may be less expensive than microcontrollers but with a corresponding decrease in data management security. Cards that use memory chips may depend on the security of the card reader for processing and may be suitable for situations that require low or medium security.
A microcontroller chip may add, delete, and otherwise manipulate information in its memory. A microcontroller may be like a miniature computer, with an input/output port, operating system, and hard disk. Smart cards with an embedded microcontroller may have the ability to store considerable amounts of data, carry out their own on-card functions (e.g., encryption and digital signatures) and interact intelligently with a smart card reader.
Smart cards may be used in many applications worldwide, including: (a) Secure identity applications—employee ID badges, citizen ID documents, electronic passports, driver's licenses, online authentication devices; (b) Healthcare applications—citizen health ID cards, physician ID cards, portable medical records cards; (c) Payment applications—contact and contactless credit/debit cards, transit payment cards; and/or (d) Telecommunications applications—GSM Subscriber Identity Modules, pre-paid telephone cards.
Also important may be the allowance of “Flat Cards” which may mean the embossed characters that were previously mandated may no longer be needed. This may open up the possibility to print the card with inkjet technology which may be flexible, and/or customer friendly. Such printed smart cards may be custom made on demand with short turn-around time or in front of the customers. More creative variations on the artistic design of the smart cards may be possible.
A smart card may have a magnetic stripe similar to the traditional credit/debit cards for backward compatibility. For a blank smart card (with embedded chip and/or magnetic stripe to be encoded, and/or the user account information to be printed), three operations may need to be performed: encoding the chip of the smart card using a chip encoder, encoding the magnetic stripe of the smart card using a magnetic encoder, and/or printing on the surfaces of the smart card. One challenge may be that the time to encode the chip in a smart card may be many times longer than the time to encode the magnetic strip and/or to inkjet print. Another challenge may be that the UV LED DOD Printer needed for printing on the smart card may be very expensive relative to the Chip encoding module.
A straightforward tendon configuration with a slow chip encoder, a fast magnetic encoder followed by a fast inkjet printer may not work well because the expensive inkjet printer may tend to be under-utilized, which may be cost prohibitive.
To match the speed of the expensive fast inkjet print, multiple slow encoders may need to be used in parallel, with associated challenges.